Comic Cuts - 8 January 2021

Yes, I almost dated this 2020...

Welcome back to Bear Alley. I hope you all had the best Christmas possible and are looking forward to getting your jabs in 2021. It could be some months, but don't lose patience and waste the almost-a-year you've already spent in various states of lockdown. Keep you and your family safe. That way you'll be keeping your friends safe when we get back to Tier 2 or wherever we go next.

Christmas at Bear Alley was fairly quiet. Mel and I hunkered down, all our plans made impossible by the creeping approach of Tier 4 which cut Essex in two for a couple of weeks in December. It didn't take long for it to dawn on us that we weren't going to be able to see family or friends and, like everyone else, had to replan everything with only days to go.

But it all worked out nicely in the end. I managed to cook on both Christmas and Boxing Day without anything going up in flames, although our pigs in blankets were close to being cremated but it turned the bacon really crispy, American style, which went down a treat. We had roast chicken and a pork joint over the two days, and no Brussels sprouts or parsnips (a Mum favourite), just the good trimmings—roast potatoes, yorkshire puds, stuffing, peas, carrots and gravy. And trifle later that evening because, frankly, we were both stuffed.

We're back to our regular schedule now: breakfast, walk, work, break, work, lunch, work, walk, dinner, watch TV, sleep. Neither of us have a clue which vaccination category we fall into. Mel might be 6 because of her asthma, otherwise she'll be in double digits due to her youth. As an old fart, I might be in tier 8 or 6, depending on how close to being diabetic the doctor thinks I am. Taking the latter into account, the Omni Calculator recons I might get my first dose some time between 2 April and 19 May, and a second dose between 25 June and 11 August, if certain conditions prevail. Given that I may have dodged the diabetes bullet by losing weight, that might push my chances back to getting my first dose in June and my second in September. So there's still a long way to go.

Of course, it's all guesswork, but we all got to have something to talk about, so why not try the Omni Calculator yourself. I will just add that it is based on a vaccine rollout of one million vaccinations a week, with a 70.6% uptake, and as of Tuesday (5th January) there had been 1.3 million vaccinations since the first on 8th December. Boris hoped, on Monday, that the top four priority groups would all have received their first dose by mid-February (approximately 13.9 million people), which would require some 300,000 vaccinations per day. We shall see, but obviously the pace of roll out will will determine the accuracy of the calculation, so treat it as... fun?

Although things have seemed to be a little slow-moving on the Bear Alley Books front, I haven't stopped working on various projects. Yes, the pandemic has slowed me somewhat, but problems elsewhere have been popping up like a whack-a-mole. The end of the transition period is causing problems as companies get to grips with what the UK's deal with Europe actually means.

For me it may involve charging VAT on books in countries that require such taxes to be paid. Postage costs went up on 1st January: I think the two main bands that my books fall into have gone up 16p and 22p. I've been absorbing price rises for years, so it's something I've got to look at. Similarly, the cost of posting to Europe and America has soared. American prices jumped last July and European prices are up as part of the January increases.

Given the various changes, I'm thinking of changing how Bear Alley books are ordered, but making the various changes has turned out to be a slightly longer process than I originally anticipated. I spent part of Christmas finishing off a project that has been stalled for a year, thanks to the pandemic. With the tenth anniversary of Bear Alley Books approaching, and with the help of the talented Martin Baines, I'm pleased to say that I'm finally almost finished with plans to reprint the quartet of books by Gwyn Evans featuring the character Bill Kellaway, otherwise known as Hercules Esq. I first mentioned this way back in March 2019 when I picked up a copy of the title I was missing, Satan Ltd. I did a bit of work at that time, but the bulk was done this time last year. Circumstances meant that nothing more could be done until now.

The good news is, the books are finished and I'm waiting on proofs. I'm hoping that they will then be available before the month is out. The first two covers adorn this column and I'll reveal the others over the next couple of weeks.

I've also had to make some revisions to a couple of older titles to hopefully take advantage of some improvements to printing over the past few years. All of this takes time, so if you don't hear me talking about BAM! over the next couple of weeks, don't panic—I'm still working on it, but I also need to make sure that when I launch I can actually get copies into people's hands.

Happy New Year, everyone.